As can be read in the top image, the concept of prerequisites has its origin in academia. However, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to extend the definition to the changing realities throughout life, including almost any job that we hold—especially those in leadership positions. In fact, it is not uncommon for certain jobs to have prerequisites such as levels of education or mastery of certain skills. However, according to the official government website, there are no formal requirements to be a Supreme Court Justice:
The Constitution does not specify qualifications for Justices such as age, education, profession, or native-born citizenship. A Justice does not have to be a lawyer or a law school graduate, but all Justices have been trained in the law. Many of the 18th and 19th century Justices studied law under a mentor because there were few law schools in the country.
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The last Justice to be appointed who did not attend any law school was James F. Byrnes (1941-1942). He did not graduate from high school and taught himself law, passing the bar at the age of 23.
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Robert H. Jackson (1941-1954). While Jackson did not attend an undergraduate college, he did study law at Albany Law School in New York. At the time of his graduation, Jackson was only twenty years old and one of the requirements for a law degree was that students must be twenty-one years old. Thus rather than a law degree, Jackson was awarded with a “diploma of graduation.” Twenty-nine years later, Albany Law School belatedly presented Jackson with a law degree noting his original graduating class of 1912.
A week ago, an opinion piece in the NYT declared that the present Supreme Court was not trying to keep US laws anchored on the Constitution when it issued its recent ruling on the immunity of ex-president Trump. It was reinterpreting the Constitution to fit its present politics, an act equivalent to rewriting it:
The most important takeaway from the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States is that Chief Justice John Roberts, with the approval of his Republican colleagues, rewrote the Constitution to place the president above the law.
The chief justice erased the Constitution’s clear contemplation of criminal charges for presidential misconduct. He conjured, out of thin air, a distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts that can’t survive the slightest scrutiny. He cloaked the executive in a prosecutorial immunity so complete that it shields almost any act a president might take from legal accountability as long as that president could tie it to a “core” duty. He eliminated, in practice, any distinction between a lawful or unlawful exercise of presidential authority. And Roberts did this, he says, to preserve the separation of powers and the integrity of the executive branch.
My last blog made the same point about nullifying the Chevron Doctrine, which states that professional federal agencies use their expertise to interpret “gaps and ambiguities.” The judges decided to give this important job to themselves, the judiciary. I argued in that blog that the first casualty of that ruling would be agencies such as the EPA, which were formed to execute environmental laws and regulations. I tried to make the case that environmental laws and regulations are an important part of the constitutional defense requirement and thus a central part of what the Supreme Court is charged with protecting.
Our environment derives from our planetary cosmological standing, which is now significantly influenced by human activities. These impacts do not recognize national boundaries. If the impact is destructive, as it often is, we must try to remedy it through adaptation or mitigation. To be effective, both actions require the ability to understand and attribute the likely origins of the impacts. Such understanding requires extensive knowledge of STEM and Social Studies.
Here is what Google’s AI wrote about prerequisites for future lawyers:
Law schools don’t require specific prerequisite courses for admission, but the courses you take and your degree can help show your readiness for law school. Some say that applicants with STEM backgrounds (science, technology, engineering, and math) have an advantage in the admissions process. STEM courses can help you develop skills like problem solving, logical reasoning, and analytical thinking, which are valuable in law school and the legal profession. STEM expertise can also be useful in areas of law like patent law, intellectual property, and tech law. Some popular science majors that can increase your chances of getting into law school include chemistry, biology, ecology, animal sciences, and natural sciences.
The issue of expertise is not confined to environmental issues. In a recent blog, I summarized what we are trying to teach our children (June 11, 2024). Essentially, we are trying to prepare our children for a fast-changing global environment:
As I have tried to show in the more than 12 years that I have been writing this blog, humanity is in the middle of at least 5 existential transitions; all of these started around WWII. They include climate change, nuclear energy, declining fertility, global electrification, and digitization. These transitions started around the time that I was born, but they will hopefully last (if some of them do not lead to extinction in the meantime) at least through the lifetime of my grandchildren (I call this time “now” in some of my writing).
All of these transitions require prerequisites in the sciences (STEM) and social sciences. An article in the NYT tried to summarize what to expect if President Trump wins back the presidency:
As president, Donald Trump’s sweeping attempts to roll back federal environmental regulations were often stymied — by the courts, by a lack of experience, even by internal resistance from government employees.
But if he retakes the White House in November, Mr. Trump would be in a far better position to dismantle environmental and climate rules, aided by more sympathetic judges and conservative allies who are already mapping out ways to bend federal agencies to the president’s will.
“It’s going to be easier,” said Myron Ebell, who led the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency after Mr. Trump won in 2016. “They’re going to have better people, more committed people, more experienced people. They will be able to move more quickly, and more successfully, in my view.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has promised to repeal federal regulations designed to cut greenhouse gas pollution that is rapidly heating the planet. Many of his allies want to go further. They are drafting plans to slash budgets, oust career staffers, embed loyalists in key offices and scale back the government’s powers to tackle climate change, regulate industries and restrict hazardous chemicals.
November 5th is less than 4 months out, but we can never be sure about the future. Going over the Republican platform or Project 2025 is not much help. I discussed Project 2025 in the July 9th blog and platforms are designed to win elections, not to govern. The next blog will try to cover the spectrum of possibilities after November 5th.
